So in the aftermath of doing a trillion MTGO cube drafts (was the first week in months we haven't been able to get the group together to do a live draft), I took notes on what worked and what didn't (because I've played from a grand total of 2 cubes in my life).
Beyond the sheer number of archetypes that open up when you have a 720 card cube (a little jealous, no lie), the one thing I enjoyed was the lack of *truly* degenerate starts. Beyond freak, glass cannon decks that can always explode on turn one or two (turn two Summoning Trap hard cast?!?), the lack of Moxen and Sol Ring seemed awesome. Does removing degenerate artifact acceleration and replacing with cards like Basalt Monolith, Gilded Lotus, etc. play out as great IRL as it seemed to online?
I removed power and fast artifact mana last summer and I like how the cube plays. Not having the fast artifact mana makes the broken cards a little less broken, because you cannot play them ahead of the curve. They are still broken, but it is not necessarily game over when they hit play.
Another thing I like about cutting fast artifact mana is that green actually has something unique to offer (fast mana).
I recommend cutting the fast artifact mana, though I admit that some players in my group would like to have it back in. Others are very happy without it, so you cannot please everyone I guess.
As for the archetypes supported, I believe more diversity is also possible in smaller lists. There is a thread about that, too: Sub-Themes vs General Good-Stuff
If you like degenerate starts to happen, include power. If you want everyone to stand a chance, remove it. It's that simple. Unfortunately, both have their appeal, so it's a rather hard question, at the same time it's one that really defines how your cube feels.
Specialities about the cube: U tempo, B aggro, R slow-ish are supported. G aggro is not.
Currently trying to support tokens in all colors but blue, in different ways: W pumps them, B sacrifices them, R suicides them, G has decent-sized ones.
cube list outdated
*literal C/U definition according to gatherer
**some cards are banned. Library of Alexandria, Land Tax, Sol Ring.
Whereas I much prefer the powered environment. Degenerate openers are the exception, not the norm. And we have no problem with green being underpowered at all. I recommend playing with all the most powerful cards you can.
I find it fun when I beat sol ring and black lotus starts, because people always assume that their T4 Simic Sky Swallower off lotus is going to win them the game right there. Or that mind twist for 5 will get them there. It's not set in stone, and I love those kinds of comebacks. And they happen pretty regularly against the "blowout" plays. Though the blowout plays themselves don't happen that often at all.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to Cube but don't have one? Check the map if anyone is in your area and get cubing!
Thank you for the feedback. I will say that being able to foster an exposive start without super-broken artifact acceleration during the MTGO cubes was ever-more rewarding.
It really all depends on the experience you are looking for.
I do have a question though: Does aggro suffer if you remove the moxen, but keep the 2-3 cost mana rocks? Explosive accel is often a bit better in slower decks, but at least aggro could still abuse the moxen and lotus.
I do have a question though: Does aggro suffer if you remove the moxen, but keep the 2-3 cost mana rocks? Explosive accel is often a bit better in slower decks, but at least aggro could still abuse the moxen and lotus.
I don't think aggro sufffers, I think it is about neutral or slightly in favor of aggro even because slower decks play higher impact spells, so they profit more from the fast accel. Now slower decks have to play their mana rocks for a fair cost of 2-3 mana, and that works great with Manic Vandal and friends to take them out.
If you like degenerate starts to happen, include power. If you want everyone to stand a chance, remove it. It's that simple. Unfortunately, both have their appeal, so it's a rather hard question, at the same time it's one that really defines how your cube feels.
I would argue that power does not lead to more degenerate starts than in any other environment, and everyone stands a chance in a properly balanced powered environment.
If Sol Ring wasn't there to be called 'degenerate', then the next most powerful thing will inherit the title. When I went from unpowered to powered I never felt like I was suddenly in a different world full of predecided games. I felt like I just made the cube more dynamic and interesting. Plenty of games have been won by players on the receiving end of some really backbreaking stuff, because in a powered cube, there is lots of backbreaking stuff to throw around, which in my mind, is the whole point of playing cube.
I would argue that power does not lead to more degenerate starts than in any other environment, and everyone stands a chance in a properly balanced powered environment.
If Sol Ring wasn't there to be called 'degenerate', then the next most powerful thing will inherit the title. When I went from unpowered to powered I never felt like I was suddenly in a different world full of predecided games. I felt like I just made the cube more dynamic and interesting. Plenty of games have been won by players on the receiving end of some really backbreaking stuff, because in a powered cube, there is lots of backbreaking stuff to throw around, which in my mind, is the whole point of playing cube.
This is my experience as well. I didn't find the change to be a massive impact that completely changed the experience of the cube. I did find Black Lotus, with a small sample size, to create really awful situations, but the more it gets played the better it feels. I likely won't ever unpower the Cube. My biggest motivation, for that, would be giving green exclusive access to fast mana. But I don't need that effect enough. Largely, a powered cube gives an experience that is unparalleled.
Ultimately, I think it depends on whether or not your players have something at stake. The more is at stake, the more players tend to clamor for a balanced environment and the more apprehensive they are about Sol Ring, Black Lotus, et al.
If people are just sitting around drinking beers, broken starts with Mana Vault etc. are fine. But if people have $50 bills on the line, facing such starts begins to feel a lot worse.
I should note, however, that I did see a modophoto of a person who turn 2 cast Channel into Ulamog. The point being that the power 9 and mana drain and sol ring and mana crypt are not themselves sufficient to warp an environment. Unless you remove a not-insubstantial number of the very broken fast-mana cards, you will face situations like this.
Magic has a skill and a luck component (imagine that as percentages, so you have x % skill and 100-x % luck). In a singleton format with a shared card pool like cube, having a few cards with a much higher impact than most other cards increases the luck component (which is always at the cost of the skill component, because the two components add up to 100 %).
A higher luck component is desirable to increase the accessibility of the format (because also less skilled players have a chance of winning; note that this will always be the case in Magic, because Magic always has a luck component) and it increases the number of highly memorable plays.
A higher skill component is desirable for a certain competitive type of player who feels cheated if the luck component is too high (both because he wins games he knows he should have lost, and because he loses games he knows he should have won). Note that this competitive player is also playing the cube for fun, but having too much luck in the format ruins the fun for him.
I think the cube builder has to find a balance that he is happy with and that works well for his playgroup. I know some players in my group would like me to bring power back, others are quite happy it is gone. I know I prefer a higher skill component myself, and because my cube is not democratic at all I just work in that direction.
As an illustration of the skill vs. luck ratio for those who know what TF2 is: TF2 is a first person shooter, and winning in a fight has a lot to do with skill. In order to make the game more accessible, many public servers have critical hits enabled, that means you randomly get to deal more damage than you normally would. That way, less skilled players can get lucky and kill higher skilled players. Some of the more skilled players choose not to play on servers where critical hits are enabled, because they don't want to win nor loose because of luck.
I happen to think that the discussion of the power vs. non power issue is quite valuable. Some might have locked in their opinion, and to them it may seem rather pointless because clearly the whole thing is not going anywhere. But me, I am not sure at all whether cutting power is the right thing to do - currently I think it is, but having arguments both for and against it and sharing experiences from powered and unpowered environments helps me to get a better picture of the situation.
I think Konfusius nailed it on the head, plus bonus points for referencing TF2.
Also I think that Phantizle might be on to something, control decks want mana more than aggro decks, and having access to it makes them much stronger then they are otherwise. Thing is at 360 not a lot of powered cubes have room for non mox mana rocks, and moxen are going to get taken by just about any deck that sees them, whereas they can count on getting signets much later if they are available.
In the Official Cube Discussion thread, I compared power to critical hits in TF2. I still think that is a good comparison:
And you theorize then, that power makes the game significantly more luck-based than not including it. I agree with your argument, but not with your premise.
There are lots of high-impact cards, enough that I would venture to say that the proliferation of them in my 360 card cube is high enough that they are distributed fairly evenly across as draft, producing decks which can compete with each other. Players can draft synergistic decks that sling high-impact effects back and forth. And oftentimes the countermeasures for the high-impact cards are cheap and generally considered non-high impact. Players who want to win will balance answers with threats and build a deck which won't lose to a random black lotus or ancestral recall. If you get steamrolled by a 'lucky draw', then you built your deck wrong, didn't draft the right cards, or should have used a mulligan — or more likely — got outplayed.
Part of my cube design is to create an environment with a low critical turn so cards which accelerate, even significantly, aren't as impactful so as to keep decks without acceleration relevant and it is working out great. I don't think power is unbalancing the cube or making 'lucky' players beat 'good' players.
(This is coming from a guy who plays SSBM with no items on stages with no moving parts, plays TF2 on servers with no crits, refuses to play brawl because of tripping, and generally despises games where luck can beat out skill, so believe me, if I felt like my cube was rewarding luck too much, I would change it in a heartbeat)
We may have to agree to disagree, but I do feel like when I opted to cut down my cube to 360 by cutting most/all of the higher-cost and slower cards I got a much flatter card-impact distribution and better threat/answer alignment allowing games to battle back and forth significantly more than before the cut-down, and I did this mainly to help reduce the luck-based variance and increase the overall power level.
I dont play power but has Sol Ring and Mana Vault in my Cube. Mana Vault is really the worse offender, as it lets you play 5cc bombs on turn two and can randomly win you games. I plan to remove all artifact mana that porduces more than 2 mana and will be trying how it works out. I will be leaving a few blue signets, mind stone, and Coalition Relic (watch list!) and see how it goes.
Having fast mana also left weenie strategies a bit unappreciated. I mean why cast a 2cc 2/2 when you can cast a 5cc 5/4 instead? Fast Mana is indeed fun because it lets you play with you bombs faster, but I want an environment where you will have to earn it by defending yourself first before you play your bombs.
I think removing fast artifact and letting the natural mana system of the game will improve cubing for our playgroup.
As with all cubes.... all boils down to preferences.
We may have to agree to disagree, but I do feel like when I opted to cut down my cube to 360 by cutting most/all of the higher-cost and slower cards I got a much flatter card-impact distribution and better threat/answer alignment allowing games to battle back and forth significantly more than before the cut-down, and I did this mainly to help reduce the luck-based variance and increase the overall power level.
I identified fast artifact mana as the by far worst offender, because it lets you play all cards ahead of curve, including the broken ones. How do you beat turn 1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor or turn 2 Mind Twist for four? Developing mana one land a turn and mana stones starting turn 2 is much less problematic for those high impact spells. You can still lose to them, of course, but you have a fighting chance. But I agree that we don't have to agree.
I dont play power but has Sol Ring and Mana Vault in my Cube. Mana Vault is really the worse offender, as it lets you play 5cc bombs on turn two and can randomly win you games. I plan to remove all artifact mana that porduces more than 2 mana and will be trying how it works out. I will be leaving a few blue signets, mind stone, and Coalition Relic (watch list!) and see how it goes.
The rule I used is that a mana artifact should not produce more mana than it costs (I do allow Mox Diamond, though).
I identified fast artifact mana as the by far worst offender, because it lets you play all cards ahead of curve, including the broken ones. How do you beat turn 1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor or turn 2 Mind Twist for four? Developing mana one land a turn and mana stones starting turn 2 is much less problematic for those high impact spells. You can still lose to them, of course, but you have a fighting chance. But I agree that we don't have to agree.
I enjoyed your premise above. Thanks for sharing.
Question: Is a turn one Jace or a turn two Mind Twist for four (I'm assuming these are both in comination with Lotus) any more ahead of the curve than Ancestral Recall (or Demonic Tutor, Time Walk, Balance, etc)? By all measures, Recall is a four cost spell (maybe three to be cubeable?), and doesn't take another card to interact with. I guess what I'm saying is that all of us powered supporters find the line that is drawn (almost any line save budget) to be strange and arbitrary. This is fine if you are doing it for "fun's" sake, because fun is arbitrary. Balance though? Balance is tougher.
Is a non powered cube or a non fast mana cube more balanced than a fully powered one? Well, that's the thousand dollar question. I think the knee jerk reaction is "yes", but I am not so certain.
I guess what I'm saying is that all of us powered supporters find the line that is drawn (almost any line save budget) to be strange and arbitrary.
The line is always arbitrary. There are an infinite number of cards that powered cubes don't run that are more powerful then the cards they presently run, because most powered cubes draw an arbitrary line on only using cards published by Wizards of the Coast. I don't see any difference between not wanting to run Mox Sapphire and not wanting to run a lightning bolt with the word "super" written in marker on the top and the number 5 written over the number 3. I mean, if your goal is to run the most powerful cards possible, why not run Super Lightning Bolt? Cards can always be more powerful, so you have to draw a line somewhere. The idea of cube is that its a personalized environment, so it doesn't seem strange to arbitrarily draw the line where you want it rather then where WotC arbitrarily drew it.
Question: Is a turn one Jace or a turn two Mind Twist for four (I'm assuming these are both in comination with Lotus) any more ahead of the curve than Ancestral Recall (or Demonic Tutor, Time Walk, Balance, etc)? By all measures, Recall is a four cost spell (maybe three to be cubeable?), and doesn't take another card to interact with. I guess what I'm saying is that all of us powered supporters find the line that is drawn (almost any line save budget) to be strange and arbitrary. This is fine if you are doing it for "fun's" sake, because fun is arbitrary. Balance though? Balance is tougher.
Is a non powered cube or a non fast mana cube more balanced than a fully powered one? Well, that's the thousand dollar question. I think the knee jerk reaction is "yes", but I am not so certain.
Difficult questions. I agree that the line is somewhat arbitrary and that it s hard to tell if the cube is more balanced afterwards. My banned list has the fast artifact mana, because as I said above, it lets you play broken spells even earlier. The fast mana is more of a catalyst than being a problem in its own right, but if I can choose between cutting powerful spells or the catalyst that pushes them over the top, I choose the latter. Then I have Ancestral Recall, Time Walk, Library of Alexandria and Mana Drain on that list. I say these are the most ridiculously undercosted spells ever, and I find it rather easy to draw a line there. All the rest is OK in my book.
Is my cube more balanced now? I would argue that yes, it is. Before, I had the potential to abuse broken cards with broken mana acceleration. Now it is just broken cards that you have to pay for in a fair way. It is true that after cutting the first offenders, you have a new set of most broken cards. But that is not the only thing to take into consideration, it is also a question of how much ahead these cards are compared to the rest. I felt that fast artifact mana, the three blue spells and Library have such a disproportionate effect on the game that I have a more balanced cube now without them.
If I would ever implement a ban list, I think I would draw the line at how much of an auto-pick a card is in draft. Anything that could be passed for another card for archetype/synergy reasons must be ok or it would be scooped up regardless of it.
I can see the argument for cutting fast mana, although I have not seen any ridiculous opener that was not beaten at least once and sometimes multiple times - and that includes the first turn Mind Sculptor/Koth, the second turn Mind Twist with X=5, the second turn Inkwell Leviathan, etc. Of course, many times those kind of plays do win the game so I can definitely see the case for unpowering a cube, but somehow the comebacks are more memorable than the blow-outs.
I'd enjoy cube with and without power, but it'd be a shame to have a set of power and not use it, so I haven't seriously considered depowering the cube.
The line is always arbitrary. There are an infinite number of cards that powered cubes don't run that are more powerful then the cards they presently run, because most powered cubes draw an arbitrary line on only using cards published by Wizards of the Coast. I don't see any difference between not wanting to run Mox Sapphire and not wanting to run a lightning bolt with the word "super" written in marker on the top and the number 5 written over the number 3. I mean, if your goal is to run the most powerful cards possible, why not run Super Lightning Bolt? Cards can always be more powerful, so you have to draw a line somewhere. The idea of cube is that its a personalized environment, so it doesn't seem strange to arbitrarily draw the line where you want it rather then where WotC arbitrarily drew it.
I never claimed my line wasn't arbitrary (although you seem to be ignoring the fact of scale here). The important question is why you drew that particular line, and if the card pool is now serving that purpose. For example, if you cut a few cards for fun reasons, and you end up having more fun, mission accomplished. However, if you cut cards for balance reasons, and your cube ends up less balanced (or no change) than before, you have to question the cuts.
Beyond the sheer number of archetypes that open up when you have a 720 card cube (a little jealous, no lie), the one thing I enjoyed was the lack of *truly* degenerate starts. Beyond freak, glass cannon decks that can always explode on turn one or two (turn two Summoning Trap hard cast?!?), the lack of Moxen and Sol Ring seemed awesome. Does removing degenerate artifact acceleration and replacing with cards like Basalt Monolith, Gilded Lotus, etc. play out as great IRL as it seemed to online?
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 49th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from MKM!
Another thing I like about cutting fast artifact mana is that green actually has something unique to offer (fast mana).
I recommend cutting the fast artifact mana, though I admit that some players in my group would like to have it back in. Others are very happy without it, so you cannot please everyone I guess.
As for the archetypes supported, I believe more diversity is also possible in smaller lists. There is a thread about that, too: Sub-Themes vs General Good-Stuff
"What am I looking at? Ashes, dead man."
450, Peasant*, unpowered**
Specialities about the cube:
U tempo, B aggro, R slow-ish are supported. G aggro is not.
Currently trying to support tokens in all colors but blue, in different ways: W pumps them, B sacrifices them, R suicides them, G has decent-sized ones.
cube list outdated
*literal C/U definition according to gatherer
**some cards are banned. Library of Alexandria, Land Tax, Sol Ring.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 49th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from MKM!
The Great Cube Map!
My Powered Cube
Draft it here!
I do have a question though: Does aggro suffer if you remove the moxen, but keep the 2-3 cost mana rocks? Explosive accel is often a bit better in slower decks, but at least aggro could still abuse the moxen and lotus.
"What am I looking at? Ashes, dead man."
I would argue that power does not lead to more degenerate starts than in any other environment, and everyone stands a chance in a properly balanced powered environment.
If Sol Ring wasn't there to be called 'degenerate', then the next most powerful thing will inherit the title. When I went from unpowered to powered I never felt like I was suddenly in a different world full of predecided games. I felt like I just made the cube more dynamic and interesting. Plenty of games have been won by players on the receiving end of some really backbreaking stuff, because in a powered cube, there is lots of backbreaking stuff to throw around, which in my mind, is the whole point of playing cube.
[Remixes] - [The Brutal Cube - 360 Powered] - [My Cube Article] - ['Print-This' Wishlist]
This is my experience as well. I didn't find the change to be a massive impact that completely changed the experience of the cube. I did find Black Lotus, with a small sample size, to create really awful situations, but the more it gets played the better it feels. I likely won't ever unpower the Cube. My biggest motivation, for that, would be giving green exclusive access to fast mana. But I don't need that effect enough. Largely, a powered cube gives an experience that is unparalleled.
The Commandments of EDH
If people are just sitting around drinking beers, broken starts with Mana Vault etc. are fine. But if people have $50 bills on the line, facing such starts begins to feel a lot worse.
I should note, however, that I did see a modophoto of a person who turn 2 cast Channel into Ulamog. The point being that the power 9 and mana drain and sol ring and mana crypt are not themselves sufficient to warp an environment. Unless you remove a not-insubstantial number of the very broken fast-mana cards, you will face situations like this.
"What am I looking at? Ashes, dead man."
Also I think that Phantizle might be on to something, control decks want mana more than aggro decks, and having access to it makes them much stronger then they are otherwise. Thing is at 360 not a lot of powered cubes have room for non mox mana rocks, and moxen are going to get taken by just about any deck that sees them, whereas they can count on getting signets much later if they are available.
And you theorize then, that power makes the game significantly more luck-based than not including it. I agree with your argument, but not with your premise.
There are lots of high-impact cards, enough that I would venture to say that the proliferation of them in my 360 card cube is high enough that they are distributed fairly evenly across as draft, producing decks which can compete with each other. Players can draft synergistic decks that sling high-impact effects back and forth. And oftentimes the countermeasures for the high-impact cards are cheap and generally considered non-high impact. Players who want to win will balance answers with threats and build a deck which won't lose to a random black lotus or ancestral recall. If you get steamrolled by a 'lucky draw', then you built your deck wrong, didn't draft the right cards, or should have used a mulligan — or more likely — got outplayed.
Part of my cube design is to create an environment with a low critical turn so cards which accelerate, even significantly, aren't as impactful so as to keep decks without acceleration relevant and it is working out great. I don't think power is unbalancing the cube or making 'lucky' players beat 'good' players.
(This is coming from a guy who plays SSBM with no items on stages with no moving parts, plays TF2 on servers with no crits, refuses to play brawl because of tripping, and generally despises games where luck can beat out skill, so believe me, if I felt like my cube was rewarding luck too much, I would change it in a heartbeat)
We may have to agree to disagree, but I do feel like when I opted to cut down my cube to 360 by cutting most/all of the higher-cost and slower cards I got a much flatter card-impact distribution and better threat/answer alignment allowing games to battle back and forth significantly more than before the cut-down, and I did this mainly to help reduce the luck-based variance and increase the overall power level.
[Remixes] - [The Brutal Cube - 360 Powered] - [My Cube Article] - ['Print-This' Wishlist]
Having fast mana also left weenie strategies a bit unappreciated. I mean why cast a 2cc 2/2 when you can cast a 5cc 5/4 instead? Fast Mana is indeed fun because it lets you play with you bombs faster, but I want an environment where you will have to earn it by defending yourself first before you play your bombs.
I think removing fast artifact and letting the natural mana system of the game will improve cubing for our playgroup.
As with all cubes.... all boils down to preferences.
The rule I used is that a mana artifact should not produce more mana than it costs (I do allow Mox Diamond, though).
"What am I looking at? Ashes, dead man."
I enjoyed your premise above. Thanks for sharing.
Question: Is a turn one Jace or a turn two Mind Twist for four (I'm assuming these are both in comination with Lotus) any more ahead of the curve than Ancestral Recall (or Demonic Tutor, Time Walk, Balance, etc)? By all measures, Recall is a four cost spell (maybe three to be cubeable?), and doesn't take another card to interact with. I guess what I'm saying is that all of us powered supporters find the line that is drawn (almost any line save budget) to be strange and arbitrary. This is fine if you are doing it for "fun's" sake, because fun is arbitrary. Balance though? Balance is tougher.
Is a non powered cube or a non fast mana cube more balanced than a fully powered one? Well, that's the thousand dollar question. I think the knee jerk reaction is "yes", but I am not so certain.
The line is always arbitrary. There are an infinite number of cards that powered cubes don't run that are more powerful then the cards they presently run, because most powered cubes draw an arbitrary line on only using cards published by Wizards of the Coast. I don't see any difference between not wanting to run Mox Sapphire and not wanting to run a lightning bolt with the word "super" written in marker on the top and the number 5 written over the number 3. I mean, if your goal is to run the most powerful cards possible, why not run Super Lightning Bolt? Cards can always be more powerful, so you have to draw a line somewhere. The idea of cube is that its a personalized environment, so it doesn't seem strange to arbitrarily draw the line where you want it rather then where WotC arbitrarily drew it.
Is my cube more balanced now? I would argue that yes, it is. Before, I had the potential to abuse broken cards with broken mana acceleration. Now it is just broken cards that you have to pay for in a fair way. It is true that after cutting the first offenders, you have a new set of most broken cards. But that is not the only thing to take into consideration, it is also a question of how much ahead these cards are compared to the rest. I felt that fast artifact mana, the three blue spells and Library have such a disproportionate effect on the game that I have a more balanced cube now without them.
"What am I looking at? Ashes, dead man."
I can see the argument for cutting fast mana, although I have not seen any ridiculous opener that was not beaten at least once and sometimes multiple times - and that includes the first turn Mind Sculptor/Koth, the second turn Mind Twist with X=5, the second turn Inkwell Leviathan, etc. Of course, many times those kind of plays do win the game so I can definitely see the case for unpowering a cube, but somehow the comebacks are more memorable than the blow-outs.
I'd enjoy cube with and without power, but it'd be a shame to have a set of power and not use it, so I haven't seriously considered depowering the cube.
I never claimed my line wasn't arbitrary (although you seem to be ignoring the fact of scale here). The important question is why you drew that particular line, and if the card pool is now serving that purpose. For example, if you cut a few cards for fun reasons, and you end up having more fun, mission accomplished. However, if you cut cards for balance reasons, and your cube ends up less balanced (or no change) than before, you have to question the cuts.